Mining the Minecraft Craze

My kids play Minecraft. Their friends play Minecraft. My friend's kids play Minecraft. I run a Minecraft server for my kids and their friends.

Minecraft is everywhere.

It only makes sense for some large company to gobble up the goose that laid the golden egg and make the founders a ton of money.

More commonly known in the gaming world by his handle “Notch,” Persson
began his career as a software developer and spent four years at Candy
Crush creator King Digital Entertainment before leaving to start his
own venture. According to postings on Reddit, Persson says he grew up
in a “relatively poor family” and only began to make a stable living
when he turned his passions for programming and playing video games
into a real job. He developed “Minecraft” and released it as a demo in
2009, before going on to found Mojang in 2010 with Jakob Porsér and
CEO Carl Manneh.

“Once I got a decent job, I never really had to worry about money,”
wrote Persson on Reddit last year. “Now, all of the sudden, as a
result of how modern society works, I managed to somehow earn a
shit-ton of money.” Forbes

While this is game is a big phenomenon, and I'm sure will make MSFT a ton of money, I'm waiting to see if they will screw this acquisition up, stifle innovation, and alienate the vibrant Minecraft Community in the process. In my personal experience, it's very rare that a "start-up" can integrate well with the behemoth that acquires it.